CEGUI (Crazy Eddie's GUI) Forums

Hi guys!
I just wanna ask about the order in depth of GUI components ! after checking all geometry buffers i found that all widgets are rendered on the plan z=0, so how u guys manage the z-order of widgets in rendering according to their hierarchy (Parent/child)? and does just the fact that in window::render() that drawSelf comes before render childen get the job done? and does children order in childrenList matters?
thank u !

CEGUI handles occlusion by draw-order. Basically this is a type of back-to-front rendering, whereas the vey back is the root, and the very front is the lowest hierarchy child, of course there is also siblings, since the elements are a part of a tree structure. I think the children order does matter, yes, but I am not sure right now without having seen the code recently. And yes it definitely matters that the window draws itself before it draws its children (otherwise it would result in front-to-back rendering and the parent could occlude the child window)

A disadvantage of this is that there is a lot of overdraw and the hardware cannot perform early-z and similar optimisations. An advantage is that we dont need depth checks and no depth buffer - albeit a small advantage. We might change this in default branch at some point, so it uses a depth buffer.